 The idea is you sacrifice to Cali and you bring forth its opposite. Now, I thought that I had come to understand the idea of sacrifice. I think I figured this out about 15 years ago. It just blew me over when I figured it out, because it had always been viewed either as kind of an epithenomena, or as something that's pathological. But it's not. It's the most remarkable, it's one of the most remarkable conceptual discoveries that human race has ever made. Because what it meant was we started to figure out that if you gave something what it wanted, if you gave something something of value, then you could turn it into something that might be beneficial to you. So it's the concomitant of delayed gratification. Because delayed gratification is a sacrifice. So you know the marshmallow experiment, right? So you get these little kids and you torture them. You say, hey, do you like marshmallows? Yeah, I know you do. So here's a bunch of them. Now, if you don't eat those marshmallows, you get to have more marshmallows. And so, then you leave and some of the kids eat the marshmallows, right? And you've got to admit those kids, there's something about them. They get the damn marshmallows. So if there was an earthquake, right then those kids would have won. So that's something to think about because delayed gratification is not always the right answer. The environment has to be stable enough so that the probability that you will get what you've delayed for is high. And so if you're living in sheer chaos, you're a fool to delay gratification. It's like eat the damn marshmallow now. So it's not like delayed gratification is the solution for everything. It's not, but sometimes it's the solution. So what do you do? You make a sacrifice now. And the idea is it will pay off in the future. So then you think about that in architectural forms. It means that you forego something of value now. It's a sacrifice. You let go of it. And the deal is if you let go of it, better things will happen to you in the future. And you know, no other animal has figured that out. Well, squirrels maybe, you know, because they store nuts, but I don't really believe that they... I think it's fundamentally an instinct. You know what I mean? I don't think they generalized from that idea. They do act it out, but I don't think they generalized from it. They haven't turned it into a concept. And so the concept here is the world is constituted such that it has a tremendously destructive element. But if you can barter with that properly, then you can flip it over and the part of it that's positive will reveal itself. It's like that's bloody brilliant. It's unbelievably brilliant. And there's even another element to it, because let's say that all you've been getting from reality for a while is Kelly. It's all spiders and snakes and fires and skull, you know, and things that want to eat you. You might think, why is that? And one answer is, well, that's just what it's like. But then that's a problem because that's not just what it's like. You know that the opposite is there and you might say, well, where the hell is that? Why is it hiding its face from me? And one answer is, reality cannot be contended with you. That's one answer. But that's like, you're depressed and hopeless to do that out. It's like, you're done. Here's another answer. You might be doing something wrong. And then you might think, well, what would it mean to be doing something wrong? And then you might say, maybe you're hanging on to something you value a little too tightly. Maybe one of your axiomatic presuppositions, like the thing that's at the top of your damn value structure, is actually sufficiently outdated or pathological, such that if you hold on to it, all you're going to get is frowns and misery. So maybe you have to let it go. Now it's a sacrifice. Maybe that's why the rule is when you're making sacrifices to galley, okay, I don't go into that matter, is don't sacrifice the low quality junk. You sacrifice the stuff that you're attached to. Because if things aren't going right, it could be that it's because you're attached to the wrong things. Now that's interesting. That's starting to get very interesting, because that means that people are starting to think, maybe my attitude has something to do with this. Something that can change. Maybe it's not just the factual nature of the external world. It's something I can contend with and dance with. And maybe if I readjusted my moral schema, the probability is kind of low that Kelly will be there all the time, and it'll be pretty high that her positive counterpart shows up. So then the question might be, how do we make the sacrifices that are necessary to organize our schema of interpretation and behavior, such that when we implement it in the world, reality shines its positive face on us and not its negative face. And that's an incredibly complicated problem. That's a problem human beings can be trying to figure out. And animals, for that matter, forever, wasn't until there were human beings that we started to get some conceptual representation of it. But then the other thing too is, you guys are all doing that. You have a big bet going with nature. And the bet is, make some sacrifices right now. Or maybe your parents are making sacrifices on your behalf. And what's the bet? The bet is, it'll be worth it. But what does that mean? It means that if you make the proper sacrifices, you discipline yourself, you're not too disillusioned with your resources, you pay attention, and you wait, your life will be better. Well, that's pretty cool because it might be true. And if it's true, then none of this is a delusion or delusion. It's just low resolution, first pass representation. And that's smart. And so, you know, from a Piagetian perspective, well, what do you do before you understand something? You act it out. And so the people that are making sacrifices, they're acting out this idea. Do they know the idea? Depends on what you mean by know. Know they're acting it out. They're dramatically representing it. Is that knowledge? Well, it's a form of knowledge. Is it the kind of abstract knowledge that we're talking about right now? No. But it's the immediate precursor to that. You don't get from the phenomenons of the articulation without running it through some bodily representations and some drama. And this is so damn complicated that you probably couldn't get to it until you had civilizations that were pretty damn good. And lots of people thinking about this all the time. And so the person who came up with this, they would have experienced it as a religious revelation. It's like, what's the nature of reality? Poof! You get this image. You know, it's of this multi-armed goddess. And it's in flames. And it's in a web. And it's like terrifying you. It's terrifying you. You're gripped by it. And you make a representation. And part of the reason you worship it is because the bloody thing has got you in its grip. It's powerful. That you should be gripped by it. You should be unable to forget it. Because it's a war.